I have a nine-year old daughter. To say I've heard a lot of Taylor Swift songs would be an understatement. The one to which I've been most exposed recently is "Anti-Hero," and every time I hear it there is one line that stands out for its five-dollar words that, at least to me, seem oddly wedged into a pop song.
"Did you hear my covert narcissism I disguise as altruism?"
After reading Ramona Shelburne's ESPN article this week, which reported on many elements of Harden's poor-me discontent that wasn't terribly difficult to detect even from afar, I have now decided that this is the James Harden anthem.
Dude is a full-blown narcissist. Everything, always, is about him. But when he went to the Philadelphia 76ers, and in doing so implicitly and explicitly announced his willingness to "sacrifice" everything from scoring to money, he tried, perhaps successfully for a while, to disguise these acts of generosity as altruistic -- which is to say he actually had a few gullible people believing that this sudden turn into basketball sainthood was born of the purest, most selfless intentions rather than a narcissistic need for recognition and reimbursement.
That was never true. If we're to accept as fact the details of Shelburne's reporting, which covers everything from Harden's dismay at not being named an All-Star to his scorned-star fury over Daryl Morey reneging on his promise to trade him to the Clippers, Harden has been acting out of self interest at every turn.
These "sacrifices" he made were always conditional. Sure, I'll take a backseat to Joel Embiid, until my ego gets a whiff that I might no longer be regarded as a top-tier player. Then we've got a problem.
Sure, I'll take a pay cut so the team can afford to round out the roster, notably by signing P.J. Tucker. I'll look like the Tim Duncan good guy, and Morey will make it up to me on the back end with a bag full of cash that my diminishing talent, coupled with the omnipresent threat that I might decide to quit on the team and bolt for greener pastures at any given moment, no longer justifies.
But then the bag of cash never showed up.
And now the Sixers have a Harden problem.
The Rockets and Nets can relate.
That Harden cannot see the hypocrisy of his expecting Morey to honor some supposed wink-wink promise when he basically refused to honor the actual binding contracts he signed in Houston and Brooklyn, not to mention the $35.6 million player option he just signed in Philadelphia, speaks to the level of narcissism with which the Sixers are dealing.
The league is listening. You want to find out what NBA people think of you as a player? Forget the All-Star votes. Check the market. Harden's, at the price he feels he deserves, is dry. Nobody is trading the top-line assets that Morey wants, and nobody is giving Harden the long-term money that he wants.
So here we are. With Harden a month away from having to report to Sixers camp to play for a new coach in Nick Nurse, who was brought in to replace Doc Rivers, who, according to Shelburne, Harden was no longer interested in playing for.
So Harden wants his money. He wants his charitable contractual donations engraved on a platinum plaque and displayed for all to see, and then paid back. He wants the return of his basketball freedom to dominate an offense and put up the numbers that will make him feel like the player he used to be. He wants to be an All-Star. He wants to play for the coach of his choice.
All this for a guy who scored nine points in Game 7 as the Sixers blew a 3-2 series lead to the Celtics. I'm telling you, Taylor really was penning the Harden anthem from the first line of the Anti-Hero chorus. It's me, hi, I'm the problem, it's me.
